Author Alan O'Hashi reimagines Superman's American Way in his memoir Views from Beyond Metropolis: True Stories of a Japanese American Baby Boomer. His memoir is about the once vibrant Japanese neighborhood on the 500 and 400 blocks of West 17th Street in Downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming, which typified the American obsession with racial and ethnic homogeneity that dates back to the 16th century.
Alan is a Baby Boomer, and his family was spared incarceration in a Japanese internment camp because they lived in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. They still had to deal with overt and subtle racism during and after World War II.
Alan melds his memoir and practical cultural competency techniques with the history of legalized oppression in the United States. The dominant culture enslaved African tribal members to drive the growing colonial economy. As the population grew and land was scarce, President Thomas Jefferson opened the West to aggressive settlement.
Manifest Destiny resulted in the conquest of Native American lands. Alan asserts that oppressive American history resulted in Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Americans feared that domestic Japanese might be spies and legalized the sorting of 120,000 Japanese, mostly on the West Coast, into 15 Assembly Centers before sending them to 10 Relocation Camps in the United States interior.
Superman's American Way exemplifies a society that is, in theory, civil and fair and provides opportunity for all, regardless of individual or group identity. The American cultural paradox engrains in its citizenry a continual reach for high material success, rugged I-can-do-it-myself individualism, and acceptance of others based on assimilation. Those constructs marginalize many people in American society.
"I was confused about having to live in the dominant culture as my parents suppressed our Japanese heritage in favor of becoming true blue Americans," O'Hashi said. What can we learn from Alan's experiences and those of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who had to endure overt and subtle racism during World War II? What can each of us do to become more culturally competent as we deal with an ever-evolving multicultural world?
